


The Ninth Of Never

by CalamityCain



Category: Norse Religion & Lore, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Everything Hurts, M/M, Regret, Tears, Time Travel, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 22:07:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10795701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalamityCain/pseuds/CalamityCain
Summary: "Your life will end before you take ten steps toward me. At the ninth, you will fall to where I cannot follow."akawhen you marry Marvel!Thor feels with Norse mythology everything will hurt A Lot





	The Ninth Of Never

 

> 'You complete my fate
> 
> The world unwinds inside of me
> 
> You repeat my fate
> 
> Rewinding all we can'
> 
> \- _Kiri_ (Monoral)

 

 

 

_I have foreseen our end. For all his tongue is as twisted as mine, Mimir speaks clearly enough._

_Your life will end before you take ten steps toward me. At the ninth, you will fall to where I cannot follow._

_I pay now the price for knowledge, my brother._

_Behold my hands, how they weave the threads of your destruction. You should have known better than to defend me. By keeping me alive you have wrought your death._

 

*

 

 

You see me tremble, and never ask why.

 

My eyes burn; my fingers feel like glass. All I am is a bloodless brittle creature, ugly with anger, ready to shatter in your too-strong hands.

 

Yet you hold me with such gentleness. This I cannot bear. There is a storm turning within me. It longs to rage, to be given release, but there is nothing to rage against save the warmth of your skin. I push you away. Again and again, I push you away.

 

When I open my eyes, you are there still.

 

Silence. Broken at last by halting words.

 

"If you wish me to turn so your tears may fall in peace, I will." His voice is a dry rattle.

I smile weakly. "How considerate."

“But I would rather not; why die beholding the dregs of war when your pretty face hovers so near?"

 

With even breaths I try to find a measure of calm. But the shaking will not stop. The tremors flow right down to my wrists, my hands. I am laughing. My mouth gapes and makes grotesque soundless shapes. I am gasping for air. I am aching.

 

I am breaking.

 

The venom eats at your handsome visage until it is unrecognizable. Until only the electric-blue eyes remain. They gaze upon me relentlessly, an accusation that burns fiercely to its dying flicker.

 

I mistake it for loathing until I hold you close. With your fading breath against my cheek, I see that the blame is a figment of my imagination. There is nothing in your eyes but acceptance. And forgiveness. And love – always, love.

 

And that is even worse.

 

“Loki.”

 

I hear you as if from a distance.

 

“ _Loki._ Come back to me, while I can still see.”

 

That strange, soft keening…is it mine? Surely such weakness never spilt from my lips. I would crumble with shame. But you leave me no room to be ashamed. Your arms hold on to me with such absolution, stronger and more constant than the branches of Yggdrasil. With such earnestness you put me back together.

 

I breathe in the roughness of your beard. Your lips catch the salty rivulets (how my eyes betray me by failing to hold them) even as you pretend they aren’t there. Who knew that sentiment would hurt so much more than the prickles of lies upon lies? For once in my life I fail to paint anything less than an honest picture.

 

In a shard of glass I catch a glimpse of my face: a white, twisted red-eyed thing. I am full to the brim with ugliness. How thin my shoulders are in your hands. I could not look in a mirror now and love what I see.

 

But you –

 

You behold me as you would the rising sun on a clear lake; admiring even my imminent self-destruction, as beautiful to you as a collision of dying stars, a harbinger of darkness eternal.

 

My shame is yours to witness. The shreds of my dignity yours to pick up, or stomp upon. Yet you hold my face in your hands as if it was an honour to do so. You hold up my hand so your palm may press against it. As our fingers interlock, as if they were meant always to do so, I realise I'm no longer shaking.

 

My heartbeat is no longer a hurricane. There is calm where once there was chaos.

 

 

*

 

 

_Serpentine death, silver-scaled and jewel-eyed. The magnificence that was born from me as much as from my witch-lover’s womb, I cannot help but take pride in. That makes it no less terrible when the mighty head crashes into the earth and into your once-unbreakable body._

_I think, for a moment, that you have survived. I see Mjolnir buried deep in my son’s head. The great gleaming eyes grow dim._

_But then, so do yours, as your weakening arms reach out to the first familiar face in sight._

_You take the first step toward me…_

 

 

*

 

 

When I speak again, my voice is almost guttural, harsh. A far cry from its silvered mellifluous self.

 

But still it lies well enough. And none will see me weep.

 

After a hundred repetitions of this journey, my efforts to twist and tangle time to my advantage has failed me. Again, again, you walk unto me. Again and again, you fall at the ninth.

 

Again.

 

Again.

 

I toy with the very fabric of hours and years and decades to no avail. I leap back through a century, and when I return it is to the very same stalemate.

 

There are times where Hela does not rise with her army of the dead. There are others where you die beneath the fangs of Fenrir, not Jormungandr. So many variations and yet they spiral into the same unavoidable fate. All my trickster’s talents crumble like so much ash in trembling palms that curl inward, fingernails cutting into flesh, carving crescents of blood.

 

You are so heavy in my arms. I was not born to bear your weight, brother. I was not made to walk this cold grey path a hundredth and one times. Surely, all the iterations that came before no longer exist. They never were. No final ninth pace with those arms stretched toward me as the light in your eyes disappear.

 

Surely….

 

Surely this time will be different –

 

 

*

 

 

 _In our every step thunders the footfall of Fate._ _In each reversed motion I see your war-torn frame diminishing, shrinking, unwinding._

_I shrink with you until we see eye to eye. My calves are built like reeds while yours are already starting to fill out. Your sturdy shoulders will drive mine to the ground until I spit stinging spells into your ear, which will mark the beginning of another fight, one I will – this time – gladly lose._

_Now we are tender; now we are careless; now we are children again. And we have all the time in the world._

 

 

*

 

 

Somewhere between never

 

(I have lived this pain countless times and each time I unmake it, I am in turn unmade)

and forever

 

(none of this was ever real; I shall rewrite it to be so)

 

we live on among the stars.

 

But for now, you have fallen silent in my arms. Merely sleeping. See, the sky stretches on before us and nothing is impossible and…and –

 

– A long wail tears into the great empty.

(Not my voice, no, not my voice, only my lips shaping itself around it only my throat, hush, you’ll see, everything will be set right soon)

 

I deliver your body to the still black sea. The icy water laps at my knees. I surrender you to its depths knowing you deserve the proper funerary flames and rites; but who is there to witness them? We are dying alone at the end of the world.

 

I am alone at the end of the world.

 

~

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is THE first fanfic i have written after a long, LONG hiatus from writing any goddamn thing in any fandom and you'd think, with my history of smutty smut things it'd be a nice lil porn one-shot. Surprise -- have some angst instead


End file.
